1. Field
Embodiments of the present invention relate to an ultrasound diagnostic apparatus management system that can improve performance of an ultrasound diagnostic apparatus having degraded performance due to a long-term usage or other reasons and promote hygiene of a subject by maintaining a clean ultrasound diagnostic apparatus, and a method of controlling the ultrasound diagnostic apparatus management system.
2. Description of the Related Art
An ultrasound diagnostic apparatus is an apparatus that radiates an ultrasound signal toward a desired region inside a body from a body surface of a subject and obtains a tomogram of a soft tissue or an image of a blood flow in a non-invasive manner using information on a reflected ultrasound signal (ultrasound echo signal). The ultrasound diagnostic apparatus is advantageous in that it is small, cheap, can display in real time, and has high safety due to no exposure to X-rays, compared to other image diagnostic apparatuses such as an X-ray diagnostic apparatus, an X-ray computerized tomography (CT) scanner, a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) apparatus, and a nuclear medicine diagnostic apparatus. Due to these advantages, the ultrasound diagnostic apparatus is being widely used for heart, abdomen, urinary organ, and obstetrics diagnoses.
The ultrasound diagnostic apparatus transmits an ultrasound signal to the subject in order to obtain an ultrasound image of the subject, and includes an ultrasound diagnostic apparatus for receiving an ultrasound echo signal reflected from the subject.
The ultrasound diagnostic apparatus includes a transducer. Here, the transducer may include a piezoelectric layer configured to mutually convert an electrical signal and an acoustic signal by vibrating a piezoelectric material, a matching layer configured to reduce an acoustic impedance difference between the piezoelectric layer and the subject such that an ultrasound generated from the piezoelectric layer is delivered to the subject maximally, a lens layer configured to focus the ultrasound propagating to a front of the piezoelectric layer to a specific point, and an absorbing layer configured to prevent image distortion by blocking the ultrasound from propagating to a rear of the piezoelectric layer.
Due to a long-term usage or other reasons, in the piezoelectric layer of the ultrasound diagnostic apparatus, a polarization array of the piezoelectric layer is shifted. As a result, piezoelectric performance may be degraded. A great deal of research on such problems has been conducted.